Sweet dreams

Well this week was normal for the most part! It was filled with tons of work, long hot days, and a ridiculous amount of walking, but it was fabulous! Hmm...where to start... we taught a lot of cool and interesting people this week. We met a missionary for the Baptist Church and he asked us to come to his house for a Bible Study. We accepted and when we arrived it was very apparent that he just wanted to prove our religion was false, but he was nice about it. He wanted to know about what we believed and since I knew he wouldnt go to church with us ( he really was just looking for dirt on us), I told him about why our religion was so awesome. I talked about eternal marriage, baptisms for the dead, the spirit world, the pre-existence. It was a really great experience though because I just gained a stronger testimony of how perfect the gospel is and how merciful Heavenly Father is with His children. For instance, a lot of religions believe if you aren't baptized in this life you don't have another chance, that you can't repent after this life and that we are all just going to be sisters and brothers, not husbands, wives, children, siblings,etc Goodness when I was talking about the spirit world and baptisms for the dead I realized that Gods plan literally is perfect. He has made it so easy for us to return to him...he gives us so many chances! Anyway, we left the guy's house on good terms.

So yesterday I found out that one of my converts is going to receive the Melchizedek.Priesthood in the stake conference in two weeks! I was so excited when I heard about his progress! Yay for converts that say firm in the church!

These past few weeks have been weeks of lots of politics. They are having some elections down here which means that every stereo system or amp that can be found is hooked to the top of a car or truck to blast propaganda to the good people of TIbiri. It has gotten to be a little annoying walking in the street with all this constant noise, but very funny at the same time. The politicians here use a lot of funny jiggles to pitch their platform. Well this last week we were in the square at the end of the night with the other sisters heading to an appointment together when one of these politicians came by with a parade of at least 10 cars honking and blaring music. People were hanging out of every car window and streaming and throwing confetti. It was quite the party. It was just such a ridiculous sight that I started laughing my head...well the politician saw us 4 missionaries and jumped out of the back of a truck and ran up to us talking about his platform. As soon as he arrived so did the cameras. He talked about all the things he would change and then asked us if we were from here....I was like....ahh no. It was hard to keep from laughing just because of the situation. Fireworks were going off over our heads, the ridiculous political jingles were playing in the background, and the paparazzi were in full force. He took a lot of photos with us so who knows if my face is in the local paper.

So the spiritual experience of the week has to do with our beloved investigator Rafaela. The first time we taught in her house we actually taught her parents not her. During the lesson the spirit was extremely strong and so we thought that Rafaela´s parents would turn out to be awesome investigators. After several follow-up visits the realization that they werent interested was very apparent and we were confused why we felt the spirit so strong in that house. Thats when we met their daughter Rafaela. Shes 20 years old and a complete doll. We´ve been teaching her for the past few weeks and marked her baptism for a week and a half ago. Unfortunately she missed her baptism because of work. She works on Sunday and can only go to church if she gets off early. We got a little frustrated because of this situation, but we didnt lose hope! This past week we met with her and she told us that she wouldn't be able to go to church this Sunday. We ended up getting a little sad about the situation, but continued to pray for things to work out. Yesterday we were sitting in the church when who should arrive but Rafaela! She told us she told her boss that she would be leaving work early every Sunday in order to go to church and that she had an experience and wanted to be baptized. Turns out she had a dream after we left her house last week and in the dream she heard a voice saying---Just follow, just follow. She awoke and according to the feelings she had she knew she had to be baptized. It was an amazing thing to hear and I started to tear up because of how thankful I was in that moment. I realized that the Lord really is preparing people for us and he is doing His part in this great work. It was just such a humbling experience to realize that the Lord can work with sometime so simple and weak as me. It really is one of the coolest things about the missionary work....the Lord uses the weak things of this earth to bring about the eternal salvation of His children. This week Rafaela will be baptized along with 2 others equally wonderful and precious investigators. ´